The SDFLA Blog is dedicated to providing news and notes regarding federal practice in the Southern District of Florida. The New Times calls the blog "the definitive source on South Florida's federal court system." All tips on court happenings are welcome and will remain anonymous. Please email David Markus at dmarkus@markuslaw.com

Thursday, February 23, 2012

“Drugs are very harmful. They’re very dangerous.”

That's the governor's argument for random drug testing of all state employees. Judge Ungaro pounced on this silly argument:

A federal judge in Miami Wednesday cast serious doubts about Gov.
Rick Scott’s order requiring thousands of state government employees to
undergo a random drug test, suggesting his policy “sweeps too broadly.”
U.S.
District Judge Ursula Ungaro peppered a government lawyer with
questions about the constitutionality of Scott’s policy, saying she had
“trouble understanding the circumstances under which the executive order
would be valid."

***

Ungaro said she would soon make up her mind about the legal
challenge to Scott’s policy by the American Civil Liberties Union of
Florida. The group argues that his order violates the Fourth Amendment
rights of state workers because the testing requirement is
“suspicionless” and therefore an illegal search and seizure.
“For
the consent [to the search] to be valid, it has to be voluntary,” ACLU
lawyer Shalini Goel Agarwal argued. “This blanket drug testing is
unconstitutional.”
The legal challenge to the governor’s order,
which has been placed on hold by Scott himself until the dispute is
resolved, centers on whether the state has a constitutional right to
require random drug tests of existing public workers and mandatory
testing of all new employees. The governor issued his order last March.

1 comment:

The Southern District of Florida blog was started by David Oscar Markus, who is a criminal trial and appellate lawyer in Miami, Florida. He frequently practices in federal courts around the country, including his hometown, the Southern District of Florida and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a former law clerk to then-Chief Judge of the District, Edward B. Davis.